Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation, Fully Ramblomatic)

I find the argument over "immersion" silly. You know what breaks my immersion? The empirical knowledge that I am sitting on a chair in front of a desk with a computer monitor upon it.

I saw this come up on Angriest Pat's (of Castle Superbeast fame) twitter awhile ago. It was pointed out there that the yellow cliff markings are apparently a thing real climbers do to mark a trail.

So, you know, Yahtzee is bitching about nothing again. Same old same old.

Edited by Silentedge89 on May 9th 2024 at 3:22:14 AM

I mean, this is just my personal opinion, but I find the yellow paint kind of condescending; I know the developers don't mean it that way, but it always feels like "we know you couldn't find your arse with both hands, so here's a bright neon sign so you don't get lost. Dumbass."

I'd rather that the fifteen minutes to puzzle it out myself, I like figuring things out myself. I like to believe I could figure out that I can leave the room through the open window for myself, you know?

Well, if they aren’t always on, there should at minimum be an option, for accessibility reasons.

SoundCloud

I mean, coming at it from the opposite direction, I think that's actually the problem.

It's not optional, you're getting it whether you like it or not. I think most people would be fine with an optional hint system, something you have to actually opt into.

Personally, I’d rather have convenience at the cost of immersion. I think consistency in being able to traverse anything would fix this.

I don’t get how indie developers fix this.

> I don’t get how indie developers fix this.

well you see they don't have to add useful markers because they can't afford to..

New theme music also a box

This is like feeling that roads are an insult to intelligence.

I’m still lost. Is making a marker THAT cost deficient?

Chico I was making a joke referring to indies being typically cash strapped an excuse not to feature it

New theme music also a box

I need to learn to stop taking things so literally.

Not really?

A road isn't giving you the answer to what is ostensibly supposed to be some kind of challenge.

Ok, but most of the games with yellow paint don’t use it to downgrade the intended challenge of the game. Final Fantasy 7’s challenge ain’t being brought down because now it’s easy to tell how to climb a cliff side.

Or you could just let players climb anything that looks like a cliff. There's no point, in an ostensibly open-world game, to funnel them down these predefined paths.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The point is more that there would be way too many cliffs to climb, and you'd have a bad time figuring out which is the right one to climb.

Optimism is a duty.

That's kind of how the Horizon games do it.

There are obvious paths, but there's a way to make them more or less obvious depending on how the player wants to adjust the accessibility settings.

And at the same time, there are also unmarked paths that don't look like paths, but if you're willing to spend the time jumping and trying to brute force things, you can find some less obvious routes.

Then there are the "locked" paths, that require specific items gained by progressing through the story to get. These are also obvious, but in context and game specific ways. So there's lots of red crystal growths that block off access to higher-level loot. They're big and obvious (along with some of the other ones like just crumbly enough walls to be pried open, or the big 'X' shape girders that can be hookshotted) so that the player can make note of them and then return later once they have the proper upgrades.

It's not a perfect system, but it does lend itself to players who are newer to the genre as well as those who wish do a bit more off the beaten path exploring.

I hate the way Horizon did it. One moment, the protagonist is a world-class athlete capable of climbing the weirdest shit, and the next she can't even get on a chest-high ledge. It was really frustrating having to find the designated climbing route when there was a perfectly climbable rocky wall right there. What, is she afraid of the rock-climber police?

I think it was a complete failure of world design. What's the point of having a realistic world like this if you need the most hokey videogame stuff for a player to actually navigate it?

Edited by Kayeka on May 9th 2024 at 10:47:02 AM

I'm a big fan of Shadow Of Mordor/War paradigm of "climb everything, everywhere". Occasional mishap with a few spots that are surprisingly not climbable can be forgiven when it works 95% of the time.

"How do indies fix this" is kinda missing the point. Indies either make climbing a meaningful thing in the game and then you have much more than one yellow line to go, or they ditch cliff climbing entirely. Its just a tradition of AAA to shove every mechanic in, so they add cliff climbing, but add it so minimally that it's just the direct corridors with nothing in.

To point at another bit of contrast. Tomb Raider games, Watch Dogs (and I imagine Uncharted though I haven't touched them) have the climbing mechanic. There is plenty times when its just a corridor, especially in dramatic run sequences. But in run sequences there is still challenge of getting the timings. And in free roam gameplay, tower climbing is sometimes a nice challenge of navigating back and forth, figuring out which handhold you can jump to, where do you need to get to unlock a different branch of the path that gets you higher, etc. That is functional gameplay, and yellow marked holds do not detract from it.

Edited by Adannor on May 10th 2024 at 12:08:51 PM

Was that at the edge of the map, by any chance?

Optimism is a duty.

All of this reminds me of the time western AAA devs were shitting on Elden Ring and calling it a failure compared to their games.

I'm also reminded how the previous debacle also led to people arguing what was better, discovering alternative routes and ways to play through the game yourself or have the game outright tell you what cave to investigate or what route to take.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on May 10th 2024 at 12:27:46 PM

Yeah, I think it's safe to say opinions are divided on this one.

Personally, I'd rather have a little help, especially in those huge sandboxes.

Optimism is a duty.

No, it was not.

Any media reviewer's opinion is going to be divisive by the very nature of media review being an inherently biased field.

Edited by Silentedge89 on May 10th 2024 at 5:56:38 AM

Why must there be a "right one to climb"? If you're going somewhere, and there's a cliff in the way, climb it. If the game arbitrarily decides that you can't because it's not the "right kind of cliff", then guess what, you aren't in an open-world game. You're in a linear game that killed an open-world game and wore its skin.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

You know that plenty of non open world games uses that stuff right?